Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 01:11:00

The deal that made it drag racing's cathedral was sealed with a handshake under a tree in a Detroit pit lane. Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park, at 10267 East US Highway 136 west of Indianapolis, has hosted the NHRA U.S. Nationals - the oldest and most prestigious event in drag racing - every Labor Day weekend since 1961. The origin was a syndicate of believers: in 1958, fifteen Indianapolis-area businessmen and racers led by Tom Binford - with Indy 500 winner Rodger Ward among them - invested 5,000 dollars each to turn a 267-acre farm seven miles from the Speedway into a multipurpose racing complex: a 2.5-mile, 15-turn road course with a quarter-mile drag strip built into its long straightaway. The drag strip finished first and made history fastest: the first pass ran on 8 September 1960, and during that year's U.S. Nationals in Detroit, NHRA founder Wally Parks and Binford agreed to move the sport's biggest race to Indianapolis - the three-year pact signed under that tree making the facility the permanent home of the Big Go. The NHRA bought the whole complex in 1979. The Nationals grew into the sport's Super Bowl: 150,000-plus spectators and a thousand racing teams across Labor Day weekend, the only NHRA event with Monday final eliminations, the richest purse in the sport, and a champions list that is simply drag racing's pantheon - every era's kings crowned on the same 4,400-foot strip. The rest of the complex earns year-round: the 0.686-mile paved oval - renovated in 1988 - hosts USAC Silver Crown and NASCAR Truck Series racing and decades of midget and sprint car nights, while the road course has carried IndyCar, USAC stock cars, motorcycles and endurance karting since 1961. Practical notes: the facility sits in Clermont off I-74 with vast grass parking; Nationals crowds make Friday and Saturday qualifying the connoisseur's sessions, ear protection is genuinely mandatory near the nitro classes, and the pit passes that let fans walk among the teams remain drag racing's great bargain versus stick-and-ball sport access.